


Five times Cecil dismissed Freddy from his thoughts, and one time Freddy gathered him to his heart

by archea2



Category: A Room With a View - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Christmas, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Humor, M/M, Pre-Slash, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-16 19:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is all tickety-boo until Cecil asks his permission to marry Lucy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Man proposes...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notluvulongtime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notluvulongtime/gifts).



> Written to celebrate Rupert Graves's fiftieth birthday and crossposted to the Gravesdiggers LiveJournal community.

"I say, Cecil, old chap, you’re sitting on my bone."  
  
One  _did_  make an effort. One had to, simply and illimitably, with the Honeychurches. To think that only yesterday, one had bent far enough away from one’s Michelangelesque level of vision – bent double, if truth be told –  to compliment young Freddy on his stamp collection. And what had this promising youth said, when told that his five-shilling Victoria was of the very hue once called  _azurite_  by the Renaissance painters? "Crikey! I’ll say it’s all right – got it from a fellow at school, and he had three gos at my tuckbox before he even let me see it. I bet  _your_  fellows never had to trade off their sponge cakes."  
  
He’s just a boy, Cecil told himself as he stood up, lifted a sofa cushion (roses, of course, the size of cauliflowers – trust Honeychurch  _mère_  to confuse interior display and agricultural show) and retrieved the miscreant bone between his thumb and finger.  
  
"Well, well. I won’t ask you to consider it now as –" He’d meant to say "a bone of contention", but the incorrigible Freddy was too quick for him.  
  
"A relic?"  
  
This time, Cecil nearly walked out of the room.  
  
But there was a certain something in young Honeychurch that made it difficult to take that firm, first step out and mean it. Some boyish gusto, breaking out in the fox-quick smile, the brown twinkle, or the oblivious show of petite white teeth. Cecil was reminded of a little faun he’d taken a fancy to in Rome, not in a gallery or a private collection for once, but in the open, brilliant afternoon air. This faunlet, all curls and marble cheek, had been part of a fountain that stood quite close to their hotel, so that walk after walk had cemented an invisible connection between man and marble. And while he could hardly point it out to Lucy or Mother (the faun, like Freddy’s bone, tended to, ahem. Stick out, quite out of place), Cecil had found the little imp rather charming.  
  
Of course, there was no earthly hope to turn Freddy Honeychurch, he of the bone and sponge cakes, into an art object. Not one mortal hope, either in this life or the next. But for the sake of his Roman lucky charm, the prelude to his romance with Lucy, he, Cecil Aloysius Vyse – would sit down again.  
  
"I say! You’re not mad at me, Cecil, are you? I really didn’t mean to rile you, cross my heart. You’ve been such a pal these days, helping me out with Latin, and how to choose ties, and all that. You’re a topping fellow. What was it you wanted to ask?"  
  
"Well..." Cecil brushed a finger to one trim half-moustache to rally his spirits. He didn’t know why, but he was feeling an onrush of self-consciousness.

"My purpose, I dare say, would surprise many. But you and I know better than to heed the standards of the  _vulgus pecum_ , be they the rustic  _crème de la crème_."  
  
"That’s cream of cream, isn’t it?" asked a puzzled Freddy. "Tea-time..."  
  
"No,  _no_ ," Cecil hastened on, aware that the dreary sponge cake was probably next on line. "What I mean, Freddy, is that we’re both above the trite conventions of age and class. To quote your own refreshing words, we are, ah. Topping fellows."  
  
"I’ll say!"  
  
"And, if I may make so bold as to borrow another of your sayings, jolly good pals."  
  
Freddy, still looking a little bewildered, gave the saying a nod.  
  
"Jolly good pals," Cecil repeated firmly. "Well, Freddy, I am indulging the hope that we might end up a trifle closer."  
  
Freddy’s mouth fell open, while his hair, on each side of its meticulous parting, bounced with extra gusto. It made him look less like Pan’s heir and more like a grasshopper with two very mobile feelers, but Cecil bestowed his kindest smile upon him.  
  
"You mean..." Freddy was speechless, a not-unusual occurence in the Freddies of this world. "You have something in mind? For us? A special something?"  
  
"Positively unique. And, to me, most delightful – if I can persuade you to approve it."  
  
"Oh, well... I mean, it’s a bit of a shock and all that, but I’m flattered. I mean, really, I am."  
  
Excellent. Cecil channelled his inner Machiavelli. "I’m very glad to hear it. And quite certain that you have your sister’s best interests at heart."  
  
"...Lucy? Lucy?  _Lucy_?" Young Freddy was rapidly being demoted from grasshopper to budgie. "What d’you mean, Lucy’s interests?"  
  
"Come, come. She must have told you I’ve asked twice for her hand in Rome?  _Jamais deux sans trois_ , and no, that’s not French for jam and crumpets. All you have to do is give me your permission, and,  _presto_! All for the best in the best of all possible Corners. Your mother is in her parlour, rehearsing her benediction speech, and —"  
  
"No!"  
  
The word, launched forth with all of Freddy’s vim and lungs, nearly flattened Cecil’s pince-nez back against his delicate orb of forehead.  
  
"I  _beg_  your pardon?"  
  
"I said no."  
  
"But surely –"  
  
"Golly! Can’t a chap get a word in with you? I said no and she said no, so there. No permission. You can go into the garden and thrash it out with her, if you like. And I know what  _jamais deux_  means." Freddy stood up. He looked very pink, yet oddly dignified. "It means  - it means ‘never two’, and you didn’t have to rub it in, a chap can take a hint. And now, if you don’t mind, I’ll have my bone. _And_ my tea."  
  
It was only when the door boomed them apart that Cecil’s mind alerted him to the fact that his mouth still hung open. Frowning, he remedied to this state of affairs. Then he braced his shoulders and let his Imperial stiff collar encompass him once more, pointing him to the path of aesthetic rectitude. Lucy was in her garden, all was well in the world.  
  
And yet he lingered on.

He’s just a boy, he told himself, a very green boy. I’m probably everything he hates. It will pass.  
  
Such words helped, and Cecil soon forgot all about Freddy, looking down into Lucy’s happy, demure eyes. The boy shook his hand decently enough and seemed ready to forgive his sister for deserting him. Their little tiff was over, and Cecil smiled benignly upon the whole family, lighting a cigarette.  
  
But when Mr Beebe waddled in, and Cecil turned to greet him, the first thing he noticed was the gigantic bone lying atop a chiffonier. Mr Beebe joked, and Cecil joked back, and the joking tided them over to the customary clerical blessing. And all that time, the bone stood there, white and glaring. 

The bone, it seemed, had not forgotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cecil's line "He's just a boy. I'm probably everything he hates" comes from the novel.


	2. Boy Muddle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mr Beebe sees the light and turns matchmaker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some authors just can't leave a timeline well alone. I plead guilty to being such an author.

_Tiddly-tinkle-tiddly-TONK. Twinkle-toodle-twinkle-too-DOINK-KLANG-PLOINK._

The Honeychurch piano spun on its tale of noise and fury, causing Mr Beebe to perk a curious ear. But then young ladies, he reminded himself, were prone to undergo a change of personality upon becoming engaged. To many it was a coming of age, subtler and less predictable than the boisterous ritual granted to their brothers by society. Say, a first crack in some white, tight-woven chrysalis, leaving them dazzled in the new sunny air, ready to grab sun and air and take to – Mr Beebe browsed through fond memories – cycling bloomers. Saying ‘Blast!’ at evensong. Repudiating suet pudding until their dying day. And, in four alleged cases, dragging the lucky man all the way down to Carnegie Hall to hear Mrs Schreiner on the New Woman.

Still, that Miss Honeychurch, who had taken to Beethoven like a piece of fresh wick to the flame, should throw her idol to the wind and convert to...

"The American ragtime, I presume?" he inquired pleasantly across the din. "It does sound a bit frazzled to my ear, but I dare say America is the better judge."

"I have no idea what it is," Mrs Honeychurch panted back across the fence, "apart from another muddle. All I know, Mr Beebe, is that you have to make him stop."

Mr Beebe, who was wondering if he might flout property and fortify himself against the ragtime with a cheeroot, blinked at the pronoun.

"Do you mean this is _Freddy_ playing?"

"Boy muddle," Mrs Honeychurch said darkly. "And it’s no use telling me it’s a Phase, Mr Beebe: phases are all very well for Mr Darwin and his likes, but these gentlemen never had to deal with a splenatic cook. Any minute now and she will either thump the Aga or launch into _Jerusalem_ , and in either case ruin the pie. Do stay for the pie, Mr Beebe, and do speak to my Freddy. Gracious! Why I have such excitable children..."

Mr Beebe declined the pie, but agreed to step up to the house. Calling on the Honeychurches was never a sedate business, one more reason why he was eager to cultivate their still novice acquaintance. But a muddled Freddy was quite another story. A hitch in the smooth run of things, one that would turn Freddy from a merry, bumbling-puppyish youth to a squared circle of adulthood, a country doctor with a small estate and a prolific family. Surely, the American ragtime stood no chance against five generations of stolid, unimaginative British blood? Still, Mr Beebe mused, for the sake of the Saturday pie, he would investigate.

"Hullo!" he called out, only to be out-ploinked by a splendidly dissonant interval. "A tritone," Mr Beebe diagnosed. " _Diabolus in musica_ , old Telemann used to call it, and rightly too. Don’t tell me this is a _Salem_ ragtime?"

Freddy stopped at once and leapt from the piano bench, his mother’s boy again. "Oh, apologies, Mr Beebe. Didn't hear you come in. I say, d’you think the printers could have made a mistake? Because this thing is damnab... it’s deuced hard to play, but everyone says it’s the very thing for beginners."

Mr Beebe peered at the score’s title and recoiled in horror.

" _Letter to Eliza_ ," Freddy read along doubtfully. "More like War Sommation to Eliza if you ask me. Why do the clever folks like Beethoven so much, Mr Beebe?" 

"Right now," Mr Beebe said with more fervour than tact, "I really couldn’t say. But I vote that we act as true gentlemen and put Eliza out of her misery. Why don’t you give us _The Silly Quadrille_ instead?"

The lad’s response was astonishing. He bowed his head and tightened his lips into a pink line.

"Or some _Pinafore_?" 

"Cecil finds comic songs vulgar," Freddy muttered to the keys.

Mr Beebe, stepping closer, was struck by a new dissonance – a visual one. Come as he might from the moneyed middle-class, Freddy Honeychurch wore home made colours. His were the browns and forest greens of the Weald, all the more when the Weald was, as now, on its best summer behaviour. The lad dropped buttons like acorns wherever his romps took him and liked caps that could be tossed off at will. The Freddy who now stood before him looked like a human _cassata_ – all red, white and purple stripes. And, outrage upon outrage...

"Why on earth are you wearing a boater indoors?"

"Cecil says caps are the crowning point of bourgeois hypocrisy. Landowners masquerading as land labour, all that. Boaters, on the other hand..." 

"Let me guess." Mr Beebe's voice struck a higher pitch – really, that boater was the last straw. "Boaters are Britain’s third concession to the Italian taste after sherbet and the Petrarchan sonnet, am I right? Yes, I thought so. Well, Freddy. With or without a boater, you, my boy, stand in troubled waters."

Freddy looked accordingly alarmed.

"But Cecil..."

"Mr Vyse"  – Mr Beebe, remembering the Third Theologal Virtue in the nick of time, checked his tongue – "is a very accomplished young man, but that doesn’t make it one whit right or reasonable that you should mimick him. Dear Lord alive! Freddy Honeychurch in a blazer-and-boater! Let’s put the West Wind in cufflinks next, why don’t we."

Freddy kicked the piano leg.

"My point, exactly. And now, if you would kindly explain –"

But the light was already inching forward in Mr Beebe’s heart, eased along by the memory of his own College days - and the soft, aching pangs of them, though his wiser self had cast them away in favour of faith and tobacco. Love at Eton, in Mr Beebe's case, had been a complete Eton mess; a podgy boy shuffling after one or two Pagan demi-gods, the blonder and slimmer of whom had dropped a few crumbs his way, asking about Latin and letting 'Porcus' treat him to ale and tarts in his rooms, only to laugh himself silly at Porcus’ shy, burning request to be called Arthur in private. 

"Oh dear," Mr Beebe said in sorrow and recognition. 

By their first winter term, a friendship had burnt out and another Calling risen from the ashes.

"There’s nothing to explain," Freddy was muttering. No more was there, Mr Beebe thought. For there it was, as plain as the black keys against the white keys, and the black frame lining that terrible, heart-jolting obituary in the _Times_ , five years ago, Lieutenant-Colonel Harold Cadover (‘Pongo’)...

Mr Beebe took the missing step that brought him to the boy’s shoulder, and squeezed it tight.

"You’re doing this the wrong way," he said quietly. "Turning yourself into something which you aren't, for the sake of one too much taken with his own image to worship it in anyone else. Don’t. You don’t know it yet, Freddy, but you have an incredible advantage over all of us here. You are still free. If you must speak from the heart, then let Nature do it for you, not Art – Art is your sister's department, and may still serve her well. But you, dear lad? Be yourself, and do us all a favour."

Not waiting for an answer, he turned away and let his steps take him again through the house. In the front garden, Mrs Honeychurch had been joined by two other people: a maid carrying a tray, and Cecil Vyse, to whom she was describing the process of  making cowslip wine with a murmuration of details. Mr Vyse was fidgeting on his chair, a view that left Mr Beebe in no doubt that Hell had no fury like a mother piqued.

"Halloa, Mr Beebe!" the fury called out gaily. "Do come and have a glass of wine. Do you think Freddy would like one?" 

"God preserve us all," Mr Vyse drawled, "if he tries musical glasses next."

Mr Beebe stood guard on the path, shielding the house and the unhappy boy in it as far as his broad shoulders allowed him. "I don’t think he deserves any wine," he answered with equal jollity. "He’s nearly turned me into a _bona fide_ Catholic."

"Really, Mr Beebe! I swear you’re getting more sybiline every day."

"First, I’ve had to exorcise your Bechstein, Mrs Honeychurch. He wouldn’t let me hear him in confession otherwise. But it's all right, really. He’s a bit down the dumps at the prospect of losing his sister, as any boy would be. Just leave him alone for a while"  – Mr Beebe stared hard at Cecil – "or, better still, with some friend of his age." 

"I’m afraid most of them are out of reach now that school is over. Of course, I could write to Mrs Floyd – such an agreeable young man, her son, I mean, and quite well-connected, well, the parents are..." 

But Mr Beebe was no longer listening. A thought had just struck him, as radiant and promising as the late Lieutenant Cadover (‘Pongo’) in his too brief youth.  

"Mrs Honeychurch," he said urgently, "would you send Freddy over to the Vicarage this afternoon? I would like to introduce him to" – in the grip of some anonymous imp, the clergyman looked at Cecil again – "a young friend of Mr Vyse’s."

"A friend of mine? _Here_?" Mr Vyse looked perplexed. More so than Mrs Honeychurch, who had turned to speak to the maid and missed the query.

"Young Emerson," Mr Beebe crooned. "Whom you so kindly directed to Cissie Villa, Mr Vyse, along with his father. The very playfellow for our Freddy. They'll do each other no end of good. Mr Emerson is a fine young specimen, but in need of some spirits, some _vis comica_. And Freddy will benefit from showing him around and playing mentor for a change." 

It was very curious to watch Mr Vyse turn still and tighten his lips into a pale line. 

"And you won’t have to deal with the boy any longer. I warrant they’ll be inseparable, once acquainted –  you know what friendship is at this age, house on fire, a thing of incandescent devotion... if the feelings are mutual."

"Fire?" Mrs Honeychurch whipped round in alarm. "Mr Beebe, I hope none of our neighbours have been injured?" 

"On the contrary," Mr Beebe beamed. "One of our neighbours will soon find himelf very, very fortunate. Now, if you can spare young Freddy this afternoon –"

"Again, young Freddy!" Mr Vyse’s temper would no longer be ignored. "Freddy, Freddy, Freddy, Freddy! Must all conversation spin on Freddy’s every act and thought?" 

And so they spoke of other things - if not of kings and cabbages, at least of the dear Queen and cabbage roses, on Mrs Honeychurch’s cue. Mr Vyse’s contribution was as witty as ever, and he looked noticeably more relaxed when Lucy joined them in a new pink dress. But Mr Beebe cycled back to the Vicarage with a somewhat wicked grin on his ruddy face, and it is not certain that the cowslip wine was entirely to blame.


	3. Green grow the rushes, O!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The little faun makes his comeback.

The boy, the very green boy, was having his way with water. It enveloped him up to his neck, white and sun-dappled, and he scooped it up in his arms. With a splash, with a laugh, he wooed it out of gravity, out of stagnation, dancing this way and that and turning the horizontal pool into a fountain.

"Are you bathing, Cecil?"

The splash rose and fell in the daylight. The boy threw his head back, his lips a soft pucker now, blowing at the wet strands of hair which stuck to his forehead. Two young nipples rose above the waterline, gleaming erect.

"Water’s wonderful!"

On the shore, the wood ferns began to stir. There was rashness in the green light, in the way the boy conducted the water - not with the cautious undulations of a Covent Garden professional, no – simply by throwing himself at it until it whooped and dived and rushed and pounced under him, as if pumped straight from the strong young heart. And still Freddy’s voice called out.

"Don’t be shy! It’s _ripping_!"

And that did it. _Ripping_ did it, with its moist, rough-edged attack on the syllable. It grasped Cecil by the scruff of his neck and ripped into him with a rash, white-hot jolt that beat on, and harder, and hotter, burning the green sight out into a flash-still of pure incandescence.

He cried out, or tried to, though the sound must have been hushed by the stuffy darkness of the room. For it was dark now. It was the dead of night, and Cecil had just woken up in a pool of sweat. For a moment he lay still, struggling with the thought that someone else in the house could have heard him. Then his fear gave to a puzzled, crescendo suspicion that he was…

(Questing fingertips, sent on an undercover mission under the sheet, all the way down to...oh, blast and bother...)

…that he was wet.  

Cecil sat up in bed, spreading his knees apart uneasily so that he could bunch up the wretched nightshirt between his thighs. He groped for his pince-nez, as if the familiar pinch to the bridge of his nose could exorcise the dream and everything it had shown to him. But even as he peered into the dark, the scalding rush of vision was still upon him. He rubbed at his eyelids, and they did not show him the heavy fall of curtains stamping out the garden view, or the pale bulk of the carafe and glass, still on waiting duty at his bedside.

They showed him the image of Freddy’s body, as they always did since that unfortunate meeting in the forest.

The worst was that the dream had not been pure lie, pure fiction.  Rather, the dream had rehashed a scene that hadn’t been for Cecil's eyes in the first place, Freddy's invitation to another. Cecil could very well imagine who it was that Freddy had called from the lake, with a gay plea to step closer, to join him in that innerest circle of melting, refreshing intimacy. Someone who wasn’t him. Who could never be him now.

In a way, this was his just desert. God knew he had tried his best - or worst - to keep the boy at bay in the previous weeks. What else could he have done? There was just too much of Freddy about the house. Step inside a room, enter any nook or niche in Windy Corner, and you were sure to spot one of Freddy’s  textbooks lying about, or the tart echo of his tobacco, or his mother cooing a fond _Freddy!_ Do what one might, Freddy recalled himself to one at every turn of the place. And this, in one’s high-tuned mind, was an offense to the moment. Whch should have his and Lucy's, their cool exquisite _carpe diem_ , to be savored like a touch of sherbet on a silver spoon. It did _not_ call for a nineteen-year-old boy and his baccy – ugh! – or tap-room ditties. Ah well, Cecil had reflected. It was only a matter of days before he could put twenty miles of railway iron between Windy Corner and himself, banning the schoolboy from his well-ordained bliss.

Now it was all a mess – like the patch of yarn between his thighs.

For the dream had been beautiful. Vile, humiliating in its fallout, yes; yet in itself, absolutely beautiful. It had fleshed out his little faun without robbing one feature from the Surrey boy with his devil-may-care manners, and in so doing, it had taken both faun and boy out of his reach forever. Taunting Cecil with a forbidden sight, just as Freddy had done that day. Freddy, ambushing them from behind a clump of leaves, his snowy, freckled shoulders shivering with laughter. Never once paying attention to Cecil as he used to, not even a _hello_ or a  _you know, you can come too_ , while Cecil towed the women away. And lashed at the wild greenery with his cane. Thank god for the cane. "Cecil, do stop!" Lucy had pleaded after a while. "The path is wide enough, there’s no need to wallop the poor old ferns." But the ferns had deserved every cut he gave them. They weren’t old or poor at all. They were a crime scene.

It was that infernal parson’s fault, really. Italy had demonstrated time and again that the clergy was up to no good, and now England was proving Italy right. Who had asked him to take Freddy bathing? Who had asked him to take Freddy bathing _with George Emerson_? Simply outrageous (Cecil seethed under the sheets). And now Mrs Honeychurch was acting on his cue, so that young Floyd – who, Freddy said excitedly, was an ace at tennis and could run a mile without breaking a sweat – would be joining them soon. From now on, Freddy would be frogmarched everywhere by Floyd and Emerson, an athletic Trinity, and Cecil left once more on the shore.

For he knew better than to take part in their games. He had learnt his lesson early on in life and learnt it well – Mother had seen to it.

* * *

He must have been five or six. Father already dead, leaving them the house in London and the few servants, one of whom had been Cecil's  nurse. A woman called…he couldn’t remember. Biddy, the odds were, or Polly, that sort of name.  (But what became of sorts, when a schoolboy turned out to be thing of beauty?) A shy girl who curtsied at Mother’s every word and took Cecil to Kensington Park because Mother found it more suitable than Hyde Park. "It is ring-fenced," Mother said vaguely, and left it at that. Kensington Gardens had a place called the Italian Garden with four fountains and statues, which Cecil was told was very tasteful and for grown-ups only, and a river called the Serpentine, which he was told was for decoration, not play.

"Of _course_ it’s for play," the strange boys had said – John and George, and baby Peter. He still remembered their names. They were dressed in sailor suits and round boaters, just like him, and all of them had run away from Biddy-Polly to fight pirates on that day. The rest of the day was a golden haze, still peeping up from under all the pain and hurt. Cecil remembered how the pirates had raced them to the Isle of the Seven Wonders and its beautiful treasure, only to be beaten and tied to their own mast, and how the treasure had been ever so bright, a heap of gold and jewels under the brilliant sun...

"Drop them! Now, master Cecil!" Biddy-Polly had cried, fearful and panting, shaking his elbow. He had looked down. There was dirt on his hands, from digging after the treasure, and the points of his collar were no longer aligned. He had dirtied his short trousers, squatting on the beach to spy on the pirates with Peter, and to cap it all, he had put his wooden whistle to his lips and committed the one mortal sin of boys – _he had blown into it_.

"What Madam will say to that, I’m sure _I_ can’t say." She hadn't even let him say goodbye to his friends. "And you such a well-dressed boy. Whatever got into you, to scuttle away and spoil your nice suit like that? Where on earth have you been?"

"On the sea" hadn’t done his case any good. He had been led before Mother, and she had acted with swift, impeccable instinct in matters of manners. She hadn’t beaten Cecil, no; hadn’t even raised her voice. Mother scorned vulgarity. Instead, she had treated him exactly as she had treated a dog of hers when he had killed her tame parrot, a gift from Lady Ottoline Morrel. Then, she had had the bird's corpse tied to the dog’s neck and the dog consigned to the porter’s yard until the dead parrot had rotted away to pieces. It had never approached a live bird again after that. Now her little son was made to wear his soiled clothes day in day out for an entire week. She wouldn’t even let him set his collar straight.

He was never to forget the shame. How Mother’s friends had gazed upon him with dainty curiosity while he bowed his head, how they had told their own children about the little boy who couldn’t keep himself clean. The lesson had branded Cecil to the core, but it had stood him well. Every moment of his adult life had been spent electing the whitest, starchiest jackets and the stiffest, steadiest collars that money could buy, and keeping strictly to the straight and narrow.  It had brought him fame among the fashionable, it had brought him Mother’s belated approval, and finally, once he had corseted himself into an immaculate I, it had brought him a bride.

 

* * *

 

Cecil pushed the sheets away. He would find a clean nightshirt. And then he would lie down in bed again and forget the dream. From now on, whenever Freddy came to find him – Freddy Honeychurch, that limber, messy, unruly, _irresistible_ nuisance – and make him feel naked under his clothes, Cecil would fight back. He would poison Freddy's swims; would ruin his games before he let the youth drag him into the danger zone and shame him before Floyd and Emerson.

After all, he had his own weapons. He knew the way of words, knew how to be cruel with them. Freddy didn’t. Irony was Cecil's mother tongue; Freddy couldn't have ruffled a fly.

If pressured too far, if taunted too painfully with Floyds and Emersons, he would lash out.

Sleep was long in coming, but it washed over Cecil at last, mercifully full of no Freddy. Instead, Cecil dreamt that he stood very straight in a lilac frock coat and top hat, under a hot-white sun. It was his wedding day, and Lucy was facing him in a white gown, every snippet of lace pinned where it ought to point. They looked at each other in silence, motionless, across two glittering partitions of glass, and everyone around them stared and clapped.

For they were two dolls in the Victoria & Albert Museum, and Sunday was always a crowded day.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of this chapter is a homage to Notluvulongtime, who made this adorable gifset for me, based on chapter 1: http://notluvulongtime.tumblr.com/post/55523312024/hardly-a-lake-more-of-a-puddle-freddy
> 
> The "strange boys" with whom Cecil played in Kensington Gardens are George, John and Peter Llewelyn, whom J. L. Barrie also met there, and for whom he wrote _Peter Pan_.
> 
> Chapter title courtesy of Robert Burns.


	4. Candle in the Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy proves true to her name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter, transition chapter before the boys get to business.
> 
> While all sentences in italics are lifted from Forster’s novel, the ending here was derived from Ivory. Team work for the win!

Half way up, she paused. Biting her lip, the cold tumult of sensations still upon her, she loosened her grip on the bannister; she listened.

They were too far gone into the glum protocole of break-up for her to come down again and hold out a softer hand. Really, the last thing she wanted was to see Cecil again, let alone "be a sister to him", the coda of all self-respecting break-ups. She was already happy in the possession of a brother, and it was as her brother’s keeper that she had drawn the first blood in tonight's confrontation. And it still felt right, that wound, that opening; even now, here, in the pooling darkness that had begun to swallow the stairs, the corridor, every darling and familiar sight – even inside the blindfolded house, it still felt appropriate that Lucy's first thrust had not been

_I’ll be damned before I let you glaze me and hang me in matrimony_

or

 _In_ my _Italian, Cecil, you’re ostinato, capriccioso and, as far as I’m concerned, estinto. So there._

or, to keep the hostilities on a simpler scale,

_You couldn’t even kiss my lips!!!_

but no. Instead, she had gone for the straight, all-decisive thrust of 

 _...You wouldn’t  play tennis with Freddy_. 

And Cecil, for all his flap-and-fluster, had understood her. Better, she suspected, than she understood her own meaning. She wasn’t clever with words. None of them h were in her family, but _h_ _e_ was: hadn’t he dazzled her once, in their Roman Spring, by talking one hour into the next while they visited the stony, shadowy museums of his choice? But she had something which he lacked. She had _pitch_. Not the perfect sort that could tip amateurs like her into the great and memorable artists, but the sort that came from practising Beethoven and Schumann and Mozart and Bach, and the secret, elusive connections that they wove between this musical phrase and that, even when the phrases belonged to different keys. 

And so she had thrown her pitch into the battlefield; had played her _fuga_ for all it was worth. Later, she tried to piece it together and failed; tried again; did recall bits and bobs (her mother’s phrase when emptying a younger Freddy’s pockets after a romp in the woods) that echoed one another on some obscure harmonic plane, theme and counterpoint. 

But what an odd score they made! 

_And are you fitted to be my husband? I don’t think so._

_Don’t open the window, Freddy could be outside._

_You can’t know anyone intimately, least of all a woman._

_This is true. I behaved like a cad to your brother._

_All right, Cecil, that will do._

_I was bound up in the old vicious notions, and all the time..._

_I’m sorry about it._

_Let me light your candle, will you?_

 

_Let me light your candle, will you?_

 

Still later, after another, happier _fuga_ had been completed, that was all Lucy remembered. She spoke of it once on her honeymoon, sitting at a window and watching a night procession fill the little streets with points of light, all the way up to the Piazza Duomo, on the Virgin’s day of birth. 

"He lit my candle," she suddenly told the blond head on her shoulder. "Cecil, I mean. The night I ended our engagement. He was so very insistent. Why was he so insistent?" 

"Perhaps you’d lit one for him" - George's tranquil answer. 

She didn’t know what to make of it, apart from taking it in as another meaning flashed her way by her impredictable young husband, only to be forgotten in the warmth of his breath. It sparked a need, and the need bloomed a rhythm, and soon they were so caught up in their ardent fellowship that Lucy had no thought to spare for another flame.  

But on that other night, poised on the stairs, she turned her head; she peered over the banister. Cecil and she were both islanded now, each of them muddled in candlelight, so very far from the other. With this thought, a twinge of sympathy flared in her. She would not come down for him, no, never again, but she could at least check that he was all right. 

Yet when her gaze found him, she started. He was sitting on the first step, almost doubled up, and he was slipping his shoes back on. Why? Surely he couldn’t be thinking of leaving them? There wouldn’t be a train before the early hours. Mother would be so awfully bothered. But there he was, Cecil Vyse, lacing his left shoe. And outside was the garden, and the night, and at the end of both, the woods. Only the woods and the night. 

Lucy was taking a step in his direction when the wind gusted in – he _had_ opened a window, then – and her candle shuddered. So did she. All she wanted now was the darkness of not remembering. He too, probably – possibly – well, perhaps, was her last lucid thought, before she turned back to the corridor and the darkness there, waiting to claim her.


	5. You that way, and we this way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Freddy sees Cecil to the station.

His clothes felt like autumn. 

No longer hanging upon Cecil, as confirmed by the vanity mirror in the late-summer, late-morning light, but from this day on _falling_ on him. Heavy-set and out of line, down to the very inseam of his trousers - as if they'd made their silk-and-linen mind to hate the man who had dragged them into the mud and taken them to bed on top of it.

He must have crossed into the open grass, Cecil thought against blurred memories of walking circle after circle in a darkness that erased where the garden ended and the woods began. And he must have turned back at some point; tumbled up and through that window again; or he would not be standing in the Honeychurch guest room, holding a dirty boot in one hand and simply not caring.

The Cecil of past days, Mrs Vyse’s cynical son, would have known what to make of the whole picture. One glance at the unruly clothes, the drab light, the exhausted face and the mock-gold frame encircling it, and he would have drawn upon his stock of mockery. _Portrait of a Jilted Suitor, Given the Boot_. _A masterpiece, sir – we’ll send it straightaway to the Salon des Refusés_.

The new Cecil looked at the shoe. Not because it was ruined, but because of the oak leaf on its toecap. 

Like the bride in the Song of Songs, the leaf was brown, but beautiful. Brown because August was on the decline, and to Cecil’s eyes under their sleep-hooded lids, beautiful. Like a jigsaw piece, all loops and hollows and glossy surface. He plucked it between his thumb and finger with a secret jolt of pride. He _had_ reached the woods last night, then.

And now he understood – perhaps because the brown leaf made him think of Freddy’s tweeds and Freddy’s brown eyes – why he no longer cared. He had been wrong before, and even now, it could be that he still was. For similes are the mind's lazy tricks, and the oak leaf was not a puzzle piece. It did not exist so as to be clicked into a design, its loops and hollows locked into other hard shapes on every side. Nobody had trimmed or pared it until it fitted one way and one way only in the pattern of things. No, the leaf was beautiful in itself. It had the splendour of all natural forms - small, neglectible when compared to the forest's immensity, yet absolutely unique. 

Cecil slipped it carefully into his waistcoat pocket. He took his thickest coat from the wardrobe and buttoned it over his rumpled clothes, kowing there was little he could do to hide his restless face and, once again, not caring much. Wearing a coat inside the house felt odd, as did retracing his sloppy footprints down Mrs Honeychurch's paisley staircase-rug. But if he knew anything about her, Mrs Honeychurch would forgive his feet their trespassing as soon as they trespassed once and for all out of her home. Already he could hear her voice, breathy with impatience, drifting out of the main parlour.

"Of course you needn't go. For one thing, I want you in the garden – one of you young people blustered into my dahlia-bed yesterday and wrought havoc upon them. Whoever invented outdoor tennis can't have been much of a nature lover, all things considered. And you wouldn't desert Mr Floyd on his last day here, would you?" 

Cecil had to stop, the pang in his chest so brutal that it felt as if his own blood was punching his heart. _Freddy_.

"Let Floyd help, then," came the quick answer. "He likes it outdoors, won’t miss me for an hour or two. Someone _has_  to go with Cecil, Mother! We can’t just send him away like a leper. Things are beastly enough as they are –"

"What did I say about the b-word, dear? And Mr Vyse probably doesn’t want to see more of us than he can help." 

"You’re just happy that he’s going. You never liked him."

"You silly, self-aggrandizing boy! Really, I have no patience with you. It's been all sulks and spikes with you, ever since we’ve had to bear with Cecil and his proposals, yet the moment Lucy dismisses him you turn on her and blame _me_." 

"Well, it’s not fair to him, what she said, and it’s not fair to pretend it’s all fine!"

"You had no business listening to a private conversation, Freddy."

"He’s hard hit. And now people will see it, him, going away with his trunk. Alone. And they’ll stare at him, and – oh, the beastliness of it! No, Mother, it’s no use arguing. I _will_ see him to the station, and if anyone feels like gaping, they can jolly well try and do it in my  –" 

But Cecil had stepped into the room. Mother and son, caught in a pinch-lipped (Freddy), stern-eyed (Mrs Honeychurch) tug of wills, started and took a self-conscious step apart. Cecil let a few seconds run before addressing his hostess.

"Mrs Honeychurch, I am very grateful for your hospitality and very sorry if my departure causes you any inconvenience. I feel that I have not repaid your kindness as it deserved. But if you will extend it once more and let Mr Powell drive me to the station, I can see to my trunk myself."

He turned and looked at Freddy.

"I’ll meet you at the gate," Freddy said.

The first step in parting, yet it made Cecil’s heart swell in gladness and pride and terrible, terrible regret even as he bowed himself out of the room. 

The first step, and it had sounded so much like a lover’s assignation.

 

* * *

 

And their walk in the forest, to give the horses some relief on their way up the slope - that, too, was a lovers’ walk. Or so it felt to Cecil felt as he committed every sight to memory, every fleeting tinge of green and brown, and the wind’s texture as it struck their faces playfully and flew off at an angle, bringing the same prickle to their eyes.

Freddy kept silent, and Cecil loved him for it. Then they ran into Mr Beebe, who looked at their odd couple in surprise, and Freddy spoke: a quick, muttered aside that made Cecil smile under the prickle because this, of course, was Freddy being diplomatic in plain view, the dear fellow. They hushed again, making their silence a vigil as the grass and trees gave in to  brick and limestone, and the horses’ jog mellowed into a halt. 

They had reached the little country station. His journey was at end.

"I’ll come with you," Freddy whispered, and, for one vivd pulse of hope, Cecil thought he’d meant... but no. Freddy’s place was in Surrey, and the least Cecil could do if he was to love, truly, forever love the little faun and the youth with the pipe (and the player, and the teaser, and the lovely generous heart that he had so stupidly misused) was to let him go. He, Cecil, had had his chance and spoiled it. Windy Corner would not let him stay on after it had cast him out in Lucy’s ruthless voice. And London would never let Freddy belong, never take his earthly grace seriously or allow Cecil to look up to him, because in London’s immoveable  _Who’s Who_ Cecil wasn't a woman and Freddy was only a boy.

The old platform smelled of sun-baked brick and everybody else's farewells. The station master was nowhere to be seen, but the empty tracks were all too visible. Cecil took Freddy’s hand in his. 

"I’ve behaved abominably to you," he said, marveling at this new simplicity - telling his own mind in words of his own. "I wish I hadn’t – believe me, I wish it from all my heart."

"It's not fair." Freddy’s eyes were much too bright for the cloudy day. "You look so miserable, and there’s nothing I can do to make it better because that beastly train is always on time and it’s due any minute now. I _hate_ being a boy. And what will your mother say?"

Cecil had to smile at that.

"Call me a fool, assuredly. She had her heart set on that match."

"But what _will_ you do? Will you" – Freddy looked down at their dusty and, in one case, muddy shoes – "go and marry another girl now?" 

Cecil, his heart tossed in the cross-winds of joy and terror, shook his head.

"I’ll travel. Rome, for a start – there’s a statue there that I would like to see again. And then...France, I dare say, and Greece. Who knows? I might even stumble on  those prodigies, the Miss Allans! Oh, Freddy, don't. Hush, dear lad. I was never worth any of your concern."

There was a rumble and a rush, and the station master suddenly coalesced into presence at the end of the platform, waving a little red flag. In a moment, their parting would be over.  Cecil threw good form to the soot and carried on. 

 "Freddy, do you remember our talk? Before I spoiled everything? You're one in a thousand, and if I could turn time back - if I could think that, now and then, you might remember me as... if I could still be... _your_ jolly good pal, with all my flaws..." He willed himself to look into the brown eyes, the stricken young face. "...then I would go in peace." 

The train streamed past them, nearly blowing Freddy’s cap off his head and filling the space around them with its screech of iron. Cecil bent to his bag, awkwardly – Powell was busying himself with his trunk a few paces off – but as he stretched up again, so did Freddy. Suddenly the young man’s mouth was on his cheek - hard and warm, not a boyish kiss. 

Cecil closed his eyes.

It was the whistle that tolled their bell, shrilled them apart. Cecil stumbled up an iron step, the station master’s warning loud in his back. He groped for a doorknob; his bag was thrown to him, he didn't know by whom, and for the next accelerating instant, his head was filled with the rattle and chaos of departure rather than Freddy Honeychurch.

Then the instant passed.

 

* * *

 

 

"You fool," said his mother, drumming her fingertips on the _Daily Mail_. "They say bachelors will be called up any day now." 

Cecil, looking out of the window at a street whipped into a fever of reds and blues, did not answer.

"Well, there’s still Information. I’m sure Mr Kipling would be only too happy to vouch for you. And they have underlings for the field missions, I hear. All you'd have to do would be to read reports and decide on what and whom to tell. A verbose job – the perfect camouflage for you." 

"Mother." Cecil turned at last, confronting a face that looked gaunter with every year under its eternal black bun. She would not age gracefully, and neither would her once-fashionable salon in its bilious Art Nouveau greens. "I have spent too much time sorting out my own lies. I will not spend next year coining new ones _pro patria_." 

"You will not! You will not!" She mimicked his arm-folded stance savagely. "Why, look at you! My son the warrior - not a drop of red blood to his veins and blind as a mope! What will you do, then? Pick up your pince-nez and fight for _England’s green fields_ and _England’s fair flower of youth_ and all that twaddle?"

Still he looked at her, long and silently enough that Mrs Vyse began to rejoice at her Parthian shot. She was folding up the paper in her lap when he smiled, and she froze.

"Do you know, Mother..." - and she knew from his tone that there would be no further arguing. "As a matter of fact, I might just do that."


	6. A Room of Our Own

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> December 1914. Cecil and Freddy meet again at Windy Corner.

"Off again? And out of bounds?" The platoon sergeant’s breath shaped an extra interrogation note in the cold air. "Dunno if I can allow that, Bone…I mean Captain Honeychurch, sir."

Freddy Honeychurch gave him grin for grin, then crooked his mouth into a _gamin_ little twist as he tried to blow a strand of hair out of his eyes. Too late, he remembered that it had gone the way of all strands. Everyone, even a young medical officer on his first posting, had to report once a month for ‘a nice clip around th’ear’, or Regulation Trim, but Freddy still felt a phantom obligation to the old haircut. 

"Oh come on, Henders. It’s not as if anyone gave a tinker’s cuss where I am tonight. One turn in the woods, and I’ll be back before you can say ‘Halt’. Look!" And Freddy began to sway dramatically on one foot, pointing to a very muddy left boot. "There’s an entire anthill down there! Right now the grandmother’s warming herself on my big toe – see how it wriggles? "

If it had been anyone else, the sergeant would have risked a joke about the well-endowed madame at the farm, a bare mile behind the reserve trench, and another part of Freddy’s anatomy wriggling for a lark. But there was something about the new arrival that kept the madame jokes at bay, though what it was Henders would have been hard put to say. That young face, say, lanked a bit after six weeks of dug-out life, but still lit up from the inside. Lit with an earnestness which hadn’t been traded yet for the greyer, coarser humour that grew on a man, week after week - the itch of survival.

Now take that (early now) hour when the light came down and the officers eased up on a tot of buckshee rum, with the talk ebbing more often than not to the wives they’d left behind. _That_ was when the doctor, or Bonesy Boy as the platoon had been quick to re-name him, would shutter up. Oh, very sweet and proper. No offence meant – only that other light fading out under a shadow that kept itself to itself, but could be felt as he excused himself, very properly, and walked back to his tent. 

"This Jack needs a Jill of his own," the Adjudant would say. "Padre, can’t you set him up with one of those little gals who keep sending the men toffee and mittens? Wartime godmothers, I think they’re called. Could do with a spot of motherin’ myself, if you get my drift." The Adjudant was a vile fellow.

But the Padre was of the opinion that young Honeychurch, who fought death by gangrene like a lion and still found time to wash behind his ears before parade, was a natural candidate for the Church.

"Girl died," the Major cut in. It was widely rumoured that the Major, a devotee of Elinor Glyn, kept a stock of her novels hidden in the orderly-room. "TB, mark my words. Asked him myself and he said it ‘wasn’t like that’. Rubbish, I said. Had he lost his dear or hadn’t he, yes, no, close ranks. And he? Yes. Now take a look at the lad. Clean, good-looking, with decent folks at his back and a string of letters under his door-bell. What girl in her senses would say nay to a boy like that? None. Ergo, TB. Probably died in his arms, too, so he could close her eyes piously afterwards. Poor little devil." 

It was a good thing, everyone agreed, that young Honeychurch had his work cut out for him and no time left to mope. A game of cricket would have been what the Major ordered, though not to be considered in the present circumstances. As for Sergeant Henders, he still thought a visit to the buxom _fermière_ would be a safer dose of pick-me-up, but what was sauce for the geese did not always accommodate the gander – and there Sergeant Henders wisely ended his thoughts.

 

\---------------------------------

 

Freddy had in fact given the farm a wide berth. Instead, he was entering the patch of wood spread around their positions east and south, part of which had already turned a war landscape. 

He hadn’t had many occasions to revisit it since the car driving him from his training camp had run out of gas, forcing him to cover the last leg of the trip on foot. The time was autumn, and the felled chestnuts barring the path had shown orange and honey-coloured leaves, while the scent of the freshly turned earth was as strong and full as in his Surrey memories. Now it was winter, and the snow had covered up all the terrible gashes. Then frost over snow; it glimmered at Freddy’s feet,in the moonlight, each step a crackle under the heavy-soled Army shoes as the woods pulled him in and Freddy fell back into the light-footed jaunt of his former years. 

The forest air gave him a sensation of relief: today, it only smelled of the Northern, sticky sap of pine-trees. The smell rose to Freddy’s head and, not for the first time in the day, turned his thoughts back to Lucy’s letter - come this very morning with the Christmas mail and the tin of Gold cigarettes. Not a long letter, nor very new, since  it could only repeat most of everything that had figured in her previous letters. But it did have one line that made Freddy’s heart break pace now, as he remembered it, and stumble to a halt. He paused, gathering his thoughts, the shadow of an owl crossing the moonlit path at his feet. 

What came next was confusion, harmless but intense. The owl’s golden eyes took the light and flashed it back into the young officer’s brown eyes; as it did, the owl hooted, only for the stern bubble of sound to taper off into another noise, lower in space and pitch, almost at level with the roots of the tree on which the bird was perched. The big burly tree (an oak, by the look of it) was entangled in its own leafy darkness so there could be no seeing what had cried out. Freddy only heard the familiar,  tried-and-true intakes of breath that came so often from the men when they tried to pacify their own wounds. 

Later, in hindsight, Freddy would smile at how simple his own response was. But this was to be a night without fear: all the officers had said so. And thus, as if the golden light had broken straight into the young man’s soul just when it was in the grip of memory, re-kindling the boy Freddy’s need to love and protect, he set out in the groan's direction. 

"I say, " he called, "are you all right? " A thought came upon him and he racked his brains, but in vain. At home, Lucy had been the lover of all things German. "Doctor," he called again, having been told that it was the same word in both languages. "I can help – where are you hurt?"

The human form bundled onto itself did not answer, his shivering all too fluent. Before he knew better, Freddy had dropped to his knees and was unbuttoning his greatcoat, then tilting the man toward him so that he could be coaxed and cradled against Freddy’s warm chest. He caught a glint of brightness as the man brought his arms around him tentatively and his face was lifted from his knees. 

"Oh," Freddy said. And then, again, "oh", a long sigh of joy across the stupor of disbelief. 

This could not be, of course. How could it? How could it have been Cecil Vyse here in his arms, Cecil’s face looking up at him with every shade of intensity from under a thin pair of silver-rimmed spectacles? But then, neither could a German officer have crossed into their no-man’s-land this morning, his only weapon a white handkerchief. Yet it had happened. And Freddy’s heart, a one-man’s-land for the past six years, could only match one miracle to the other and cheer them all wildly. 

It took Cecil several trials and misses to speak. When he did, his words still came out by half-frozen little packs, making little sense. Freddy caught  _at last_ and _unchanged_ and once, to his growing concern, Miss Bartlett’s name.

"What?" he said, trying to wrap Cecil closer in his arms and coat. He listened some more and shook his head. "Gosh, you have to be burning. How long have you been sitting here? Oh, it’s your ankle, I see. I’ll – " 

But Cecil was not done with his Bartletting.

"… _in that dark and forlorn wood, with many a foe darkly a-foeing, there was still ecstasy in him at the long lost touch_ …and she would be right, too. God forbid I jest at the lady or the ecstasy. God forbid I ever doubt Christmas again, Freddy Honeychurch. Only, don’t let me go this time."

"No, oh god no. We’ll both go together. It’s really topping that we’re in a wood because I’ll just break a branch – see? – and make a splint. I’ll have you back on your feet in a jiffy, Cecil. Oh, but is it really you?" And Freddy, overwhelmed, had to stop his ministrations and look at the dear face again.

"I fell. The proverbial fall, lying in ambush for my pride," Cecil told the world at large, his shivers half melting into laughter now. "But not a word to Miss Bartlett, or she’ll tell that friend of hers and I’ll come back to find that _Two in a Shell-Hole_ is all the rage in Grub-Street. Oh, what am I saying. I’m never coming b – ouch!"

 

But the cold had played anaesthetic free of charge, and the improvised splint made it possible for Cecil to keep step with Freddy if Freddy kept his arm round him. Then, hot on the heels of reunion, came the fussy debate as to where they should head their steps.  Both knew in their minds that the farm was their best option : Cecil’s _estaminet_ was too far away for Cecil’s ankle, and smuggling a civilian into the trenches could end up in ‘a bit of a stew’ – Freddy’s very British translation for court-martial.

Over his shoulder, Cecil glared at the treacherous shell-hole " The farm, then.". 

"The farm," Freddy echoed glumly.

They both stayed exactly where they were. 

"Only..." And Cecil felt the soft plea of Freddy’s breath on his cheek. "Only, you see, the officers have gone over to visit the German quarters. There’s to be a truce, starting of tonight. And a football game!" Freddy could barely contain his happiness. "My point is, everyone will be pretty much disbanded by now and it would only be for a few hours, anyway. And then, if anyone asks who you are, we could pass you off as one of those Italian volunteers from the French battalion a bit further down. You were always such a chap for Italian, Cecil, could you do it again? What d’you think?"  

Cecil, once more, took his time answering. " _Tutti mi pensieri sono per te_." [All my thoughts are about you.] 

"Spiffing!" said the oblivious Freddy, herding them back along the path. "And look! The snow is falling again. It will cover your overcoat. But your haircut does look a bit civvy. Here!" And he could not repress a mischievious grin. 

"No, you look dashing," he hastened to add before Cecil could take on a martyred look. "It’s just – it’s something I told my mother, years ago. Never mind that. You’re welcome to my cap, Cecil, and to – and to everything else, really. Look, here are the camp lights."

 

* * *

 

 Entering the trenches proved a less tricky pass than Freddy had feared. Sergeant Henders had joined the little embassy to the German positions and the men were indeed disbanded, though most of them had already re-banded around the tin buckets filled with coal that played second-hand brasieros. There were a few catcalls at the sight of Cecil, but only because they were mistaking him for the Adjudant, who liked to sport a trim moustache, thinking he’d let the German schnapps get one over him and had to be brought back. 

Freddy had expected Cecil to fuss at the slime, and the coal, and the frittering earth that dusted everything and everyone once inside, turning them into a universal shade of olive drab. But Cecil, now seated on Freddy’s stretcher bed, kept silent while his host busied himself with fire, drink and healing. Once his eyes had accustomed themselves to the half-light, he adjusted his glasses and peered at each object in turn, his long, thoughtful face as intent as if he had been studying the creases of a mantua on a Quattrocento Virgin.

"The view is rather nil," Freddy agreed, sitting next to him. "But it’s ours for a few hours. We kip three in one as a rule, officers’ rule, you know, but the others won’t be back for a while. You – "

And a thought struck him. Up to now, he hadn’t even considered the possibility that Cecil might have been looking for him, and while it still soared far above his present hopes, he could think of another reason for Cecil’s presence. "Is that why you’ve come here? To interview us? Lucy wrote that she had seen some pictures of yours in the _Daily Chronicle_. There was more, but I couldn’t make it out, it was all crossed out in greasy black ink. I thought perhaps…perhaps you were here too, in France, because they only do that when people write about the war." 

His hand was taken; was detained in a firm clasp. 

"I volunteered," his bedfellow said. "And the Recruiting Office – every picker and chooser of them, smelling like a bed of fried onions – turned me down. They wouldn’t have me because of my bad sight, so I thought I’d teach them a little lesson."

Oh, he hadn’t changed, Freddy thought, his head swirled by love, rum and thanksgiving. He was still the old Cecil, the dear fellow who had so much liked to be clever and play pranks on the philistines. Freddy shifted his weight closer and wrapped his other hand around theirs. " What lesson?" 

"Show them which of us had the clearer eye. Freddy, don’t you see? I know about pictures. For a long, long time they were... all I could allow myself to love. When I came back to Rome, all those years ago, and found there was one statue that had never been made into a picture, no print, not even a postcard, well... I commissioned a photographer to print it for me. Paid the fellow very handsomely, indeed, and became so taken up with his art that I ended up buying him out of his whole apparatus. It’s here now, down at the _estaminet_. At least I hope it still is. I think the landlord thinks I’m a spy, which I am, but for our side."

"But you didn’t have it with you tonight?"

"Luckily for us, tonight was mere reconnoitering."  

"But – how can you do it?" Freddy said, more puzzled than shocked, for war photography was indeed a taboo activity. "Isn’t it very dangerous?" 

"Oh, Freddy. Only you would sit knee-deep in the ninth ditch of Inferno and worry about my safety. It’s too late anyway. It’s what I do now – because I have to. Because this is no longer a laughing matter to me. If I was as unselfish as you, I would say that I’m doing it for the greater good, the off chance to stop a bunch of oh-so- _pukka_ old boys from slaughtering a generation of Michel-Angelos. But the truth, Freddy Honeychurch, the raw, uncivil truth of it, is that I’m doing it for you." 

"But why?" 

"Because, my dear little fool, this is not a gentlemen’s war." 

"But it is! We’re playing football tomorrow." 

Cecil merely looked at him.

"It - " Freddy’s shoulders drooped suddenly. This hadn’t been one of the worst days, but all of the others were seeping back under Cecil’s tender, implacable gaze. The next words hurt, but he pushed them bravely out of his throat. "It’s _very_ beastly." 

The kiss was unexpected, coming as it did without a by-your-leave, but Freddy embraced it. Clumsily at first, then, when Cecil tilted his head and the cap fell to the ground, with a force that was almost savage - but only as the wood itself had been savage, all green fuse and bird-wings battling the forces of winter. Then the kiss slowed; the kiss blossomed and lazied as Cecil’s mouth plied itself to his, until the warmth flooded them at last, full-bodied and hard up for more. And more. And still more, and harder, until Cecil’s hands were on his belt, clever and waiting.  

"Yes," Freddy said from the impatient sum of flesh and heart, and pushed himself up against Cecil’s mouth again.

 

* * *

 

 The Primus stove had witnessed the remarkable sight with fortitude, but gave up soon after. Freddy groped for their mutual coats and lit a Gold cigarette from his mouth corner. It was a quarter to midnight; they still had an hour to themselves.

"The _Daily Chronicle_ keeps all my mail for the present time. Write me there." 

Freddy nodded. "I’ll keep you briefed – as far as I can. There’s talk of posting us to Egypt. I think the men will be glad: everyone’s sick of the mud and cold." He rested his head on Cecil’s shoulder, watching the trail of smoke as it eddied away in the air. "I say, wasn’t it brave of Lucy to write all those things about you? I – I’d asked her about you when I’d left, but she couldn’t be bothered. George had just lost his job, you see – he refused to enlist. I suppose she saw your pictures and changed her mind." 

"Not only that. You see, I…wrote to her, too, before _I_ left England."

They remained silent, letting the bright firepoint between them flicker and shine. 

"Do you know," Freddy mused, "Mr Beebe was quite vexed when she married George. He wouldn’t speak to any of us for weeks. Mother was quite puzzled and so was I; he seemed so eager for George to meet us at the time."

"Hmmm," said Cecil. He sounded as if he had more to say on the subject, but checked himself. "How is your mother?" 

"She's doing fine, thanks. Says life in Surrey is no longer what it was, and I suppose it’s not, although I miss the old home. They have a thing here of naming every path and dug-out after a place in England – you’ve seen the placards as we went. Picadilly Circus. Oxford Street. Lincoln Inn. Well, this is Windy Corner. Only I can’t write it down, because the first time I mentioned it everyone else thought I was pulling their legs. They said to keep that sort of name for the Aid Post." 

"And yet it feels right, meeting you again at Windy Corner. It feels -  like a second chance."

Freddy raised himself on his elbow to face him better. "Yes."

"What I actually mean is…"

"Crikey, Cecil. You _really_ need to learn when to stop and listen to a chap! I said yes."

"…if there is another time. Another room." 

"There will be. There has to be. Oh, Cecil, listen! The men are singing."

Still locked into each other’s warmth, they hushed to catch the gist of Christmas. The men were, indeed, singing – of one accord, if a little off-key at times. Their song was _Silent Night_  and as Cecil and Freddy listened, it began to swell, boosted by another, farther flurry of voices. 

"They’re singing too," Freddy whispered, turning his head to listen better. "On the other side."

" _Stille Nacht_. Dear lad, come back to me."

Freddy did, and they waited the song out before rising, a little awkwardly, in the dark. Freddy lit a lantern and handed Cecil his cap again. 

"Another time," he said simply. 

"Yes. If I can help make it happen. Another room?"

"Yes" – with the same impetus that would, four years later, in a white and rocky village perched on the Greek coast, greet the arrival of the _Daily Chronicle’_ s twice-cited war correspondent. "A room of our own."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes on the war background here. The 1914 Christmas Truces, never to be renewed, have always fascinated me. While the shared singing of Still Night was first mentioned in an officer's letter home, my cue here was Gary Brooks's "Belleau Wood". 
> 
> Cecil's adventures as a war photographer, first undercover and acting against Lord Kitchener's express veto, then an accredited and medalled war reporter, are modeled on real-life war photographers such as Philip Gibbs or Basil Clarke. It took one year for the British to accept that the public did want to see the war as it was, and not as it was handed out to them by propaganda.
> 
> While Italy did not enter the war before 1915, a great number of Italian immigrants living in France volunteered from the very start. They were incorporated into the French battalions during the first year of war, before Italy claimed them back for its own troops.
> 
> Oh, and Freddy's "remark to his mother", prompting his later giggle, is a quote from Forster's book in which Freddy says of Cecil that he's "the type of fellow who would never wear another fellow's cap".
> 
> All my thanks to those of you who followed and commented upon this fic, with apologies for that belated final chapter (it went through many false starts!). The whole work is dedicated to Notluvulongtime with many thanks for her lovely gif and constant encouragement (and, needless to say, for Silver Fox Saturday).


	7. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Have a two-part epilogue! Two fandom friends wanted to know what happened to Freddy and Cecil after the Great War. So "1919" was written for Notluvulongtime and posted on Tumblr; "Round by Rome" was commissioned by Rusty_Armour in the context of the Rupert Graves Birthday Auction. 
> 
> I've toyed with the idea of rewriting them as a unique chapter, which just didn't work. Each part has its own format and pacing, but the two of them tie in together and make a nice whole in my opinion. In any case, here's the boys' ever-after - and here's hoping it makes you happy too!

**1\. 1919**

1919\. Freddy, a respectable young veteran on the cusp of thirty, no longer sings solo comic songs. Instead he writes and performs comic duets, and is rapidly getting known as a musical expert - in the music-hall acception of the word. Freddy has indeed become the family bee, and while Mrs Honeychurch still hopes that he will meet “the right girl” some day and gift her with the extended family which George and Lucy seem unwilling to provide, she is grateful that “dear Cecil” agreed to take him under his wing. 

1919\. Cecil’s clever war chronicles,  _Brass Tacks_ , will, sadly, never the day as a volume. Not in a time when everyone from royalty to the man in the street is determined to praise the war... andbury it. While Cecil himself grumbles at having his wit ignored in this “low, dishonest decade” (unsurprisingly, his best chum is another satirist named W. H. Auden), he has found consolation in reading them aloud to Freddy before their chimney fire. They have a little cottage with a garden in Middlesex, only a stone’s throw from Drury Lane and the National Gallery. They also have a car, a rumbunctious black affair christened “Mrs Beebe” by Cecil, and Freddy loves driving her to and from London. Cecil, who loves Freddy, suffers nobly and emphatically through these jaunts, though he had to put his foot down when it came to Freddy driving, singing _and_ waving his cap to other motorists all at once.

1919\. Lucy and George are frequent visitors, along with their little daughter. Mrs Honeychurch, while lamenting that Windy Corner has turned into Windy Hermitage indeed, takes the train now and then to keep an eye on their garden. She usually remembers to bring a cushion for their living-room.

1919\. Mr Beebe has finally reconciled himself to the fact that Freddy chose to wait for his first love (to stop being a starched-up nincompoop) instead of listening to the voice of reason (Mr Beebe’s) and taking George bathing again. He has also discovered that visiting the silly lads, as he insists on calling them in Cecil’s hearing, is a good cop-out when he is hard pressed to open yet another Peace Bazar.

1919\. Finally, finally, Cecil takes Freddy to Rome. His lips twitch when Freddy, barefoot under the ragazzi’s good-natured cheers, wades into a certain fountain and brings his arms around a little marble faun. The faun and Freddy smile alike, cheek to cheek, while Cecil readies his camera. Then, as the Italian sun brings up a brilliant sheen in Freddy’s chestnut hair, a flash crackles along and a long-forgotten line from Tennyson lights up in Cecil’s mind:  _Love is the only gold_.

 

**2\. Round by Rome**

 

 _"Every one, soon or late, comes round by Rome_ _" – Robert Browning._

 

"La-la-la-la-kissin’you ," Freddy sang with stubborn, if slightly hoarse gusto across the clouds of dust they were raising on each side of the open-hooded Diatto. Renting the car had been Freddy’s idea; Cecil, who had entertained vague hopes of a moonlit entrance in Rome and a _vetturino_ , had said yes to please Freddy and because he still felt a bit queasy from their five hours’ stay on the Marseilles steamboat.

"Ta-la-tilala-hissin’you", Freddy warbled happily. He struck a tentative yodel on the honk.

"You can’t hiss people," Cecil said. "Not that I would object in most cases, but it’s still not grammatically ‘crikey’." He was careful to quarantine the last word with an arched eyebrow.

"Well, it’s music-hall, " Freddy said, his coda whenever Cecil tried to bridle his lyrical musings. "Aren’t you going to open your eyes? Scenery’s not half bad!"

Freddy was currently working for "a writer chap" named P. G. Wodehouse, the friend of a friend of a friend of Mr Emerson who had praised him as a gentle disciple of the Comic Muse. Freddy thought him top-hole, all the more when Wodehouse commissioned him to help with the lyrics of a new musical comedy for the London Gaieties. An ecstatic Freddy had embraced the project whole-heartedly. A less ecstatic Cecil had stood by and watched as the Comic Muse made herself one of the household.

He had congratulated himself on his fund of patience during the six weeks it took before Freddy could start a sentence in terms other than "Plum says".  Then came the fateful evening when Freddy had burst in while Cecil was enjoying his first sip of a rare and carefully distilled brandy, and demanded a rhyme for gun.

Cecil had blinked slowly at the love of his life.

"It’s the musical," Freddy explained. "Plum says they’ve finally made up their mind on the title – it’s to be called ‘The Girl Behind the Gun’!"

This was the last straw, and Cecil accordingly rose from his seat. " _Quod barbari non fecerunt_ , he told Freddy with righteous wrath, _Wodehouse fecit_."

Freddy blinked tout court. 

"Meaning, I’m taking you to Italy next month." And Cecil had softened at the look of pure, undistilled joy on Freddy’s face. " _Mi piacer_ , dear lad. But we are _not_ taking Mr Plum and his females of disreputable character along."

* * *

 

"Scenery’s jolly nice," the young barbarian now insisted. "I say, Cecil, are you all right? You look a bit sickish."

"I," Cecil informed him, "am reconnecting with the Italian mystique." He kept one hand on his stomach.

He only moved it when they stopped before his old hotel, the establishment which he and his mother had patronized thirteen years earlier. It had lost some of its bloom, Cecil now saw; the hall, once resplendent in black marble and sussurous waiters, showed a number of chips and too many potted apidistras; what had once been a refreshing penumbra felt plain gloomy. At his side, Freddy had fallen into untypical silence. Cecil glanced aside and saw him take off his cap as if he were in church – Freddy!

The landlord, an unknown entity to Cecil’s eyes, was proceeding cautiously toward them.

"Mr…Vyse?" he enquired, his voice muted with reluctance. "I’m afraid there has been a mistake. 

"A mistake?"Cecil braced his shoulders, stretching himself up to the best of height, staring at a point hovering a good inch above his interlocutor’s head. From the corner of his eye he caught the man’s eyes spidering over Freddy and the man’s little grimace at the open shirt collar and the tousled young head. "Enlighten me, _prego_." 

A hushed monologue followed about plumbers and carpenters and the rooms being sadly, unfortunately, out of order for the present. But Cecil stopped listening when the doors opened again and a group of men walked in. Four generals and two colonels, he counted quickly, all in full regalia, all in the pink of health and wealth. They stopped and stared at him. He stared right back. 

The landlord was still busy staring at Freddy.

"We do not even have _one_ room left, sir, " he said in meaningful tones, and Cecil surprised himself by greeting the words with a blistering jolt of rage. He curled a hand on Freddy’s elbow and pivoted his friend, marching them straight into the assembly at the door. One general was not quick enough and stumbled into a potted plant. Cecil, seized by the imp of epigramme, turned and said pointedly:  "An hostel old is a host to mold".

Then allowed Freddy to kick the door open.

"I’m sorry," he added once they were back in the noisy, sunny Via del Corso. "Or rather I’m not, I dare say, but I wish… I should have known there was no coming back. I should have booked other rooms."

"It’s because of your chronicles, isn’t it? They were beastly. Those men," Freddy hurried on, to preclude any misunderstanding. He sniffed at the warm air, benevolent with the scents of the various trattorias, and laughed his delight. "Oh, Cecil, let’s just have a bite and a romp! The sun is topping here."

The sun was indeed topping, and so was Freddy stepping full into it, his honest brown hair shot with burnt-gold lights. Cecil thought of his new Debrie camera, still ensconsed in the car’s yellow boot, but desisted. There would be all the time to come for frames and settings; for now, let Freddy and the sun have their hour of play.

* * *

 

 They idled through the big and the little streets, stopping at times to allow Freddy to hail a cat and Cecil to reconnect with the Roman mystique. When his stomach, ever contrary, gave the latter warning that it was well past noon , they retraced their steps to the piazza where they had left the car.

"What the  – " Cecil began, but Freddy was already bouncing forth.

 "Football! Oh, isn’t this great?  Hullo," he added for the nine ragazzi perched on and inside the Diatto to watch their peers kick a ball in the deserted square. " _Inglese_ – Freddy – sport fiend – oh, and _musica_ fiend, too. Mind if I join you? "

And of course,  _join you_ became Freddy suiting the action to the word and diving into the many-legged crowd with a happy whoop. He had known better than to ask Cecil, who leant back against the Diatti, resigning himself to fate and football as he lit a gold-tipped cigarette to placate hunger. Still, Freddy in action was a fund of marvel, one that never ceased or paled, if only because it came to Cecil as the hard evidence of Freddy being alive and well.

"I say, I’m positively starved," came as further proof of Freddy still being a creature of this world. The game had ended in a frenzy of whoops and lazzi, and the friendly youths were surrounding them. Freddy grinned at them under the sweat. "You chaps wouldn’t know of a good place to eat? Cannelloni,"he added with a firm rub to his own tummy. "Vitello al lemone? Risotto something something savore?"

Trust Freddy to learn by heart the culinary section in his sister’s old Baedeker, which she had kindly gifted to him on learning of their plans.

But the ragazzi were delighted. And when they found that Cecil could speak their language, they became nearly delirious and towed the two of them all the way to Marco’s mother, who cooked tortellinis worth a king’s ransom and had a nice, clean, limewashed room to let at the back of the house.

* * *

 

"I think I’ve got the hang of it wrong," Freddy said around a mouthful of pasta. "The kissin’ should come first, and then some other stuff."

"Is this a proposal?" Cecil deadpanned him. "I would be more than amenable, but you know my stance on tennis and testimonies of lust – not in public, dear lad."

The dear lad kicked him good-naturedly under the table before remembering his hostess. " _Scusi_ ," he mumbled. She beamed Mediterranean warmth at him, but it was Cecil whom she addressed with a quiet _Va bene_.

"No, I mean… " But Freddy had lost his musical thread in contemplation of Cecil’s slender line of mouth, now flushed with pepper and thyme, and repeated libations from the homely red wine.

They retired to their room and did not come out before the heat had abated, and the first shadows of the afternoon loitered on the white walls.

* * *

 

"It’s nice," Freddy said tentatively. He had pronounced the statue anatomically correct but still seemed confused by the young god in hot pursuit of the young woman. "But what comes next? When he catches up with her?"

"Oh, nothing much. She turns into a bush of laurel. A happy ever after, if we are to believe Ovid."

"Laurel?" Freddy said, visibly puzzled by the dynamics of mythological romance. "Like the stuff in Mrs Mancini’s gravy? Girls _are_ rum creatures."

Cecil looked right, looked left, and dropped a kiss on the goldbrown hair. "Come," he said. "You’ve been very good and let me show you four cardinals, nine antiquated saints and half a gallery of young ladies doing rum things. I think it’s time we moved on to Caravaggio." 

"Caravaggio," Freddy repeated dutifully. Then, on a plaintive note, "More saints?"

"…Oh," he said a minute later, mesmerised. Cecil let him take his fill of a nubile, dark-nippled _John the Baptist_ , eyes half-hooded under a Byzantian tumble of curls, then steered him to the _Boy with a Basket of Fruit_ , equally curled, not less tantalizing.

"Oh," Freddy said, mouth open on a round huff of breath, and Cecil felt something happen in his chest that had to be the selfish, sensuous, simple moment of being in love. 

His elation, sadly, was short-lived : the room once devoted to the Domenichinos now hosted a series of newfangled paintings by a glut of self-styled ‘Futurists’, and he had to stay there a whole ten minutes while Freddy underwent illumination.  

"It’s an _automobile_ ,"Freddy said again and again in awestruck tones. "It’s _smashing_!"

"Well, it’s giving me a headache," Cecil griped, and dragged him, still wide-eyed, far from the higgledy-piggledy splatter of curves and angles.

 

* * *

 

 

The Baedeker proved of little help. It turned out to have been Lucy’s mother’s faithful companion in her own tour of Italy, back in 1875, and half of the pages had been crossed out or edited by George in an evening of leisure. George, it seemed, had successfully managed his transition from the Note of Interrogation to the Note of Exclamation via a happy marriage, and the Baedeker bore the brunt of it. 

In the end, they left it in the gentlemen’s room of the Caffè Greco and took the Diatto for a spin into the countryside.

"No violets," Freddy sighed. "Lucy’s always going on and on about them."

"That would be Tuscany, dear lad."  Cecil, kneeling cautiously down on his jacket, smiled at his horizontal lover. "Can I offer poppies and corn as a consolation? 

Freddy looked up under the bangs which still, and gloriously, got in the way of his eyes and grinned. 

"Kissin’ you in the poppies and corn," rose his boyish voice. "Kissin’ you, it makes me heaven-born!"

"Now you’re being _cute_."

"Kissin’, kissin’, kissin’, kissin’ you." Freddy’s hand dashed out and grabbed his, tugging him to ground level. "It’s kissin’ time in Rome when my heart feels true!" He paused to loop one arm around Cecil, capsized all over him, and pluck the glasses off his paramour's nose. "You know, I think that would make a ripping title – Kissing Time."

Any objection that Cecil could think of, he was no longer in a position to utter.

* * *

 

"Such a good day," Freddy yawned, curling into him. The one room let to them came with one bed, but it was a _letto matrimoniale_ , wide and fresh as a Roman meadow. Cecil could lie sideways with Freddy in his arms and his toes would not touch the board.

"Practically perfect," he said.

"Hmmm… have to write to Mother tomorrow. She wants us to tell her about the English cemetary and that fellow Keats’s grave. No, wait, that’s Emerson. Mother asked about the gardens. And fountains."

"Tomorrow will be a garden day," Cecil promised him. And a fountain day, he vowed for himself.

Freddy stretched languidly, cat-like in his arms. "…didn’t take any photograph?"

"Tomorrow," Cecil whispered. "Tomorrow."

And tomorrow became tonight’s rhythm, lulling them into repose as the Roman night bathed them, and the Roman life went on in the busy streets. Tomorrow, Cecil thought, and let the three-note song be their guide, all the way to their morning-end.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on "Round by Rome":
> 
> P. G. Wodehouse was well and truly commissioned to write the lyrics for a musical in 1919. It went through several titles, including ‘The Girl Behind the Gun’ and ‘Madame and his Godson’, before gaining immortality as ‘Kissing Time’. Freddy’s lyrics are my own invention. 
> 
> The Futurist painting which provides Freddy with his own mystical hour is ‘Dynamics of a Car’ by Luigi Rossolo. It was painted in 1912, but was a source of inspiration for many others featuring motorcycles of all sorts.
> 
> The Caffè Greco is one of Rome’s oldest cafés and still a great place for eating and drinking if you don’t mind crowds!
> 
> The 1875 Baedeker on Central Italy, with its repeated lamentations on the Central Italians' lack of cleanliness, goodliness and general Britishness, can be read online. (Which is a good thing, because the Bibliothèque Nationale is sorely lacking in 1919 guides of any sort!)
> 
> 1919 was in fact a year of crisis for the Romans, with various riots and manifestations in March. I thought of fitting them somewhere in, then decided I just wanted the boys to enjoy their day in the sun and scheduled their trip in May.


End file.
